


He Had Something

by shakespearespaz



Category: V (2009)
Genre: F/M, One Shot, ooc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2013-03-25
Packaged: 2017-12-06 11:20:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/735097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shakespearespaz/pseuds/shakespearespaz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Dale had been (almost) Fifth Column material. Rather OOC one shot just exploring an idea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	He Had Something

 

He didn’t ask for things.

He was part of a content though ambitious breed. His race was superior, connected on a level unfathomable to the ants he had conducted most of his life among. They had no need for the messy individual relationships humans spent so many years of their lives cultivating. The Visitors prized efficiency above all else; every session of Bliss fulfilled their necessary dose of love and acceptance without heartache and struggle. He was grateful for this, as he witnessed daily how the chaotic need for such things easily turned man against man.

When it first began, he figured if he could pinpoint what it was exactly his heart (no, not heart for they had already fixed the problem of the heart) needed, he could remedy it and move on.

He didn’t know and couldn’t know, but when she smirked at him across the desk, eyebrows arching, eager for him to ask what she had found, he knew they must have missed something.

She would continue to mystify him, until the day he realized that he no longer tried too hard to joke with her, that he enjoyed himself more when they spent a late night at the office than when he had to leave early to play house with his fake wife who didn’t know she was fake.

Erica was genuine.

The first time she made a possibly disastrous judgment call, speeding blindly through what should have been an easy operation with that passion that found its way into everything she did, he shared the blame. It was early on in their partnership, and would have been career damaging to either individually, but together they weathered through.

He was under strict orders not to lose his prime access to her; he didn’t need to tell them that he personally had no intention of leaving his partner.

Partner. He liked the word. His race had little use for words such as partner or companion; they found them demeaning. Each V was an individual, strong enough to contribute to their whole sans support.

There was the one and the many and nothing in between.

Except for those dreary winter lunches, when he and Erica would brave the cold and trek to their small deli of the type that scared away tourists and sometimes even locals. All of his senses were heightened, at least in comparison to hers, and if she found their favorite booth stuffy and smoky and sticky on occasion, he should have found it unbearable. They’d argue, they’d laugh, he’d glance discreetly around, but knew that to any spies outwardly he would appear a dedicated V, weaving the delicate web of connections needed for their arrival.

“No, you see, most people are wrong; you _can_ end a sentence with a preposition—”

“A sentence you can end a preposition with?” he mocked her in his best imitation of that little green creature from that one movie.

(He had rented the series for research purposes, after she had quoted it while they were doing some tech work. His confused face when she referenced droids had led to his admittance that he had never seen it and, appalled, she ordered him to go home and educate himself. He found the representation of space itself rather ridiculous, but had to admit he enjoyed the music and understood her crush on the Ham guy.)

She twisted her necklace around her fingers and rolled her eyes at him.

He didn’t realize he wanted her until the night his cellphone vibrated angrily on his counter at one in the morning.

Her son was asleep and she should have been, instead he found her curled up on her couch; eyes red from crying or wine or both he couldn’t tell.

“The divorce was finalized.”

With four words he understood, carefully removed the almost empty bottle to the kitchen and returned with water, letting her rest her head against his shoulder until dawn broke through the pale, large house meant for an entire family.

For the first time, he dreaded with his entire being what he had to do to her.

He thought about simply asking for what he wanted.

Only Anna knew all the plans but once the V’s landed he could at least ask. What use could they have for her after Tyler’s part was done, and he would have served his Queen well enough to deserve a reward. But as he lay in bed at night beside a snoring wife thinking it through, he realized that he was being stupid. He was a V, a dedicated servant, not a swashbuckling space adventure hero who would save his partner (who hardly needed saving) from the fast approaching revolution. No, he and Erica would be part of the monumental events about to sweep the planet the same as everyone else; there was no escape.

And then they landed. A milestone, a hallmark, a date that would never be forgotten.

He would never forget how in the midst of the most epic occurrence known to visit earth, she had called him to talk about world-wide chatter in terrorist cells.

Every sleeper was plagued with anxiety that day, but he felt a new feeling creep through, this one of something he could not name; she had always surprised him.

Maybe it was the inherent nature of the Vs, to control, acquire, possess but he thought of her in that moment of his Erica. She was going to bring down either the Vs or the Fifth Column by not missing any scrap of evidence, blue eyes keen and shiny, her tough, witty shell concealing the fallible, fragile human he knew lived inside her.

She was his, he vowed.

That vow lasted until she discovered the wrong evidence. Humans and their small technological advances had amused him, but he cursed everything when she found the text.

He had to be at the warehouse; she couldn’t be.

As he let her go in alone, his heart sank (maybe he didn’t have a heart but he had something).

But Vs didn’t form connections, they obeyed. They obeyed and life was simpler, one voice, uniting them together against their key to a better existence and their enemy (he refused to believe she herself was the enemy, but someone had to be).

He knew he would miss her face every morning even though she was hardly a morning person, her quips about creepy suspects, the way her eyes lit up when she talked about Tyler as a child. He would miss her smile that seemed to radiate from her soul and the fact that she was the only human who didn’t repel him, whose softness was so unlike anything he had known. The Vs knew aesthetics, but she was beautiful in a way no V could replicate or possess.

Or maybe they could, he assured himself. (He would have to ask.)

He opened the car door and stepped out. 

**Author's Note:**

> So OOC I know, because after he awoke Dale was basically ready to kill her, but maybe with the loss of memories he forgot this among other things? In other news, this was completely self-indulgent, as in I don’t ship Erica/Dale, but wanted to imagine shipping Elizabeth-Mitchell-as-Erica with Alan-Tudyk-as-Dale. I wanted more of these two interacting and wouldn’t be opposed to writing more if anyone desired so (or I might because I think I desire so).


End file.
